The heart of a computer is a magnetic hard disk drive (HDD) which typically includes a rotating magnetic disk, a slider that has read and write heads, a suspension arm above the rotating disk and an actuator arm that swings the suspension arm to place the read and/or write heads over selected circular tracks on the rotating disk. The suspension arm biases the slider into contact with the surface of the disk when the disk is not rotating but, when the disk rotates, air is swirled by the rotating disk adjacent an air bearing surface (ABS) of the slider causing the slider to ride on an air bearing a slight distance from the surface of the rotating disk. When the slider rides on the air bearing the write and read heads are employed for writing magnetic impressions to and reading magnetic signal fields from the rotating disk. The read and write heads are connected to processing circuitry that operates according to a computer program to implement the writing and reading functions.
The volume of information processing in the information age is increasing rapidly. Accordingly, an important and ongoing goal involves increasing the amount of information able to be stored in the limited area and volume of HDDs. Increasing the areal recording density of HDDs provides one technical approach to achieve this goal. In particular, reducing the size of recording bits and components associated therewith offers an effective means to increase areal recording density. However, the continual push to miniaturize the recording bits and associated components presents its own set of challenges and obstacles. For instance, as the size of the ferromagnetic crystal grains in a magnetic recording layer become smaller and smaller, the crystal grains may become thermally unstable, such that thermal fluctuations result in magnetization reversal and the loss of recorded data. Increasing the magnetic anisotropy of the magnetic particles may improve the thermal stability thereof; however, an increase in the magnetic anisotropy requires an increase in the switching field needed to switch the magnetization of the magnetic particles during a write operation.